The CBS Murders by Richard; Hammer

showing that the condominium belonged to Madeleine Margolies, another document also was recorded showing that the property was mortgaged for $125,000 and that the holder of the mortgage was M & M Merchandising. It was a very unusual mortgage. First of all, no interest was payable on it. And even more unusual, the mortgage matured and became payable only when and if the condominium ever was sold. If, however, Madeleine Margolies decided that she wanted to transfer the ownership as, say, a gift to her husband, Irwin, or to her sons, Stephen and Douglas, or to her brother, Scott Malen, or to her parents, Herman and Molly Malen, or to anyone else, the mortgage would remain intact and not have to be paid off.
    Meanwhile, there were the Oxenberg diamonds, now owned by Gortz. At about the time of the closing on the condominium in Florida, Irwin Margolies sent his brother-in-law, Scott Malen, around to see Harris Freedman. Margolies had little use for Malen other than as a messenger boy, though he employed him as a salesman for Candor. “He’s a schmuck,” Margolies complained to his lawyer, Oestericher, and to others, “but what can I do? He’s my brother-in-law.” Malen arrived at Freedman’s office bearing a note from Margolies. The note asked Freedman to turn over the Oxenberg diamonds to Malen, who would, in turn, deliver them to Margolies. The jeweler explained that he needed physical possession of them because he was about to make a selling trip to show them to prospective buyers. Freedman complied. Malen took the diamonds and handed them to Margolies. Freedman never saw them again, and he never saw any money, and he was out the $125,000 that he, and Gortz, had paid for them. September 1 came and went and no money was paid by M & M Merchandising or anyone else to Zvi Oxenberg for the diamonds. His distress sale had, indeed, been a distress, for him and his principal in Israel, Bitterman Diamond.
    Diamonds, of course, were an obsession with Margolies. They were his hedge against the future, whatever it might bring, they would see him through anything. Accumulating diamonds, then, was his passion. By early summer of 1981, he had the Oxenberg diamonds and he had the diamonds he had swindled from Van Mopes. And he had a lot more. He was pouring Maguire money into the purchase of diamonds, and not the low-quality stones that Candor used to make its merchandise, but very high-quality gems. The money to buy those diamonds—and here he was buying and not attempting to swindle anyone but Maguire—from the best suppliers was channeled through Candor, which had no use for them, and through a new company, Madeleine Chain Corporation, set up in April 1981 with Madeleine Margolies as president and her brother, Scott Malen, as vice-president, theoretically to make and sell low-quality, low-cost trinkets. Between them, Candor and Madeleine Chain bought $2,250,000 worth of the best diamonds by the summer of 1981.
    And what happened to those diamonds? In the spring of 1981, one day Scott Malen was hanging around the Candor-Madeleine Chain offices on West Forty-seventh Street when his sister summoned him. She had a bag on her desk that she could hardly lift. She asked Malen to carry it for her. Together they made their way down the street to a nearby branch of Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company and down to the safe-deposit area. Madeleine Margolies signed the register for a safe-deposit box rented by a company called A & B Amusement Corp. It was a dummy, of course. It had just been formed. Its officers on the corporate register were listed as Samuel, Molly, and Ann Tuttleman. Molly Malen’s maiden name was Molly Tuttleman. And the offices of A & B Amusement were the same as those occupied by the Margolieses’s friend and attorney Henry Oestericher. At the bank’s vault, Madeleine Margolies took the heavy, bulging bag from her brother and disappeared into the safe-deposit area, along with a